


The Bells of Hell

by sanguinity



Series: sang's moreholmes [14]
Category: Charlotte Holmes Series - Brittany Cavallaro
Genre: (except our two heroines), Angst, Crack, Everybody Dies, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 12:56:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13858209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguinity/pseuds/sanguinity
Summary: In which August Moriarty is not a Danish prince (nor was meant to be). He is a Serbian archduke, and it is the last days of August.Or it was, four long and bloody years ago.





	The Bells of Hell

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this misbegotten bit of crack nearly a year ago, shortly after reading _The Last of August,_ then put it aside and forgot about it. But book three is nearly upon us, so it's now or never.
> 
> Spoilers for _Last of August,_ of course. **Warnings** for character deaths, graphic violence, and flagrant abuse of historical metaphors.

When the smoke finally cleared, only Lena and I were left standing.

 _Watson will be along shortly,_ I thought distantly. _Like Fortinbras, entering fifteen minutes late with Starbucks. He'll enjoy that, he was very attached to this being Hamlet._

Our war with the Moriartys had been nothing like _Hamlet,_ of course, not in the end, and not in the beginning, either. It had come to pass exactly as Uncle Leander had foretold, when Watson had failed to show up for winter term. I had been trying to contact Watson, staring with growing dread at _Number Not Found,_ when an email arrived from Uncle Leander:

> _Charlotte,_
> 
> _With the approval of his parents, Jamie is grounded for the rest of the war. Mark my words, there will be bodies on the barbed wire by the time this is done. I am resolved not to be a part of it, but there are vanishingly few services James Watson has ever asked of me; I can do nothing to stop this war, but I can ensure that his son will not be among the casualties._
> 
> _Our great great-great-grandfather had the foresight not to drag his own Watson into a battle to the death; if you cannot bear to absent yourself, Charlotte, then at least forbear from dragging Jamie into hell with you._
> 
> _Leander_

My reply to him bounced, of course. He had disappeared, my uncle Leander, and he had taken my Watson with him. The last time Uncle Leander had disappeared, he had wanted to be found. There would be no finding him this time.

When I brought up Uncle Leander's betrayal during our Holmes family council of war, Aunt Araminta was entirely without sympathy. She leveled me a look and intoned, "If you wish to demonstrate you're responsible enough to have a friend, Lottie, then perhaps you should begin with a cat." 

I seethed, but buckled down to the task of winning all-out war with the Moriartys. 

In the end, we needn't have spent so much time planning; victory was nothing more elegant than simply killing all of them before they killed all of us. It was ugly and brutal, a straightforward war of attrition, with no more cleverness or strategy than hurling ourselves at each other and hoping our opponents would have the courtesy to die first.

Aunt Araminta went early, during that very first spring. Her death was coincident with the demise of her apiary, dead bees raining from Sussex apple trees by the tens of thousands. We found Araminta's body rigid and swollen among her empty hive bodies, but Phillippa Moriarty was not satisfied with the carnage she had wreaked. Her rampage continued, through Cornwall, Devon, and Dartmoor, murdering hive after hive of Aunt Araminta's beloved British Black Bees. There was no point to the continued slaughter — until Araminta, there had not been a Holmes since my three-greats grandfather Sherlock who cared a fig about bees, and even Araminta would never care about them again — and yet Philippa determinedly and single-handedly reduced Britain's struggling stock of native honeybees to a tattered remnant not seen since their collapse just after the first Great War. 

Alistair, in revenge for his sister and her bees, firebombed Phillippa's greenhouses and biotech company, paying special attention to the one that counterfeited rare orchids. Milo plotted a more direct course of revenge, and put a bullet through Phillippa's favourite brother's skull.

In those early days, Milo was still green enough to feel the shock of murder, but after another two years of continuous war with the Moriartys, Milo became as cool a sniper as any of his employees. It was Milo himself who double-tapped James Sr. — Uncle Leander's Watson, the only man my uncle ever loved and my own Watson's father — while James hung suffering on the barbed wire of Lucien's devising. We never learned if Uncle Leander had the fortitude to withstand his Watson's agony, or if he would have capitulated and surrendered James' son into Lucien's hands: Milo, distrusting of the traditional sympathy between Holmeses and Watsons, simply took matters into his own hands before Uncle Leander could react. By the time Lena and I charged, trumpets blaring, to Watson _pater's_ rescue, we found James Sr. flayed and mutilated, two neat holes in the back of his head and his face torn away by the tumbling force of Milo's bullets. We were still in time to wreak vengeance on James Sr.'s torturers, however, and we did so, gladly. I had _liked_ Watson's father, once, back when I was still young and imperssionable.

Unfortunately, as so often happened in those first years of the war, Lucien, the mastermind behind James Sr.'s capture and torture, was not to be found. 

Milo was not to be found, either. The next day both of James Sr.'s families disappeared, vanished thoroughly and completely into the clandestine network of cells that was the remains of Greystone Security. When Milo returned again, he assured us that even he would have trouble laying hands on a Watson now. 

Then Milo himself died, his throat slit under the heel of one of Georgia Moriarty's designer stilettos, and Watson's mother, sister, stepmother, and half-brothers were all irretrievably lost, undiscoverable by Moriartys and Holmeses both. 

Perhaps they would re-emerge from hiding, now that the war was over. 

Or perhaps they would choose to stay lost. 

I could only recommend staying lost. Our war had been so complete there was not a Moriarty left standing and hardly a Holmes, either — even Julian Holmes the insurance salesman, his innocuously pleasant wife, and their two perfectly dull daughters had fallen in the carnage — and yet I had no illusions about the finality of our conflict: not even that first, fabled Great War had been so devastatingly complete as to end all war. We had wreaked nothing but steady and unremitting slaughter until hardly a friend, cousin, employee, henchman, or mercenary were left standing, and yet I knew in my soul that someday some distant orphan foundling of the Moriartys would appear, honed sharp by her desire for revenge, and it would all begin again. 

_Dulce et decorum est, pro domia mori._

"Hush," Lena said, her arm around my shoulder, turning me away from Lucien's body, and I realized I had been laughing, or maybe sobbing. _I am become Ophelia,_ I thought, but that couldn't be right, because Ophelia drowned in her own misery, I remembered that distinctly. _I am Ophelia, come from the dead, come to tell you all—_

"Hush now," Lena said again. "It's over."

Lena had been my ace up my sleeve, my flying ace, appearing where I needed her. Lucien had been as blinded by the Holmes-Watson-Moriarty mythos as any of us, and had initially failed to credit the importance of anyone named _Gupta,_ much to his later rage and regret. When, far too late in the engagement, Lucien finally attempted to capture me via an attack on Lena, he found himself dangerously over-extended, weakened by his earlier takedown of Milo's organization. His attempt to engage the Guptas on their home turf became a rout. "Never get involved in a land war in Asia," Lena had said, vengefully popping her gum.

But even the Guptas had taken their losses.

My knees threatened to buckle, and Lena eased me down to sit against the wall. "Stay there," she said, and turned back to dispose of Lucien's body.

My hands were still awash with Lucien's blood, and eventually I got up to clean them. I washed them only once: Watson's fancies aside, I am not Lady Macbeth, nor Ophelia, nor any other Shakespearean madwoman. I was more like Aunt Araminta, stormswept and broken on the Sussex coast with her cats. 

Cats who would foretell the coming of the next Moriarty.

Willing my hands not to tremble, I went to find Lena.

"We should get a place together," Lena said, when we had finished cleaning the evidence. I leaned on her motorcycle, having a calming cigarette. Lena, as always, had her gum.

"Of course," I said dully, the future spreading out before me. Not like Araminta with her cats, but like my three-greats grandfather and his boon companion, marking time until Moriarty. I had once envisioned that future with Watson, but that was the dream of a child too impressed by bedtime stories. It was Lena who knew where the bodies were. "A little place in London, which will suit us right down to the ground." 

"Ew." Lena made a face. "No, how dull. I was thinking Paris, or Seoul. Someplace lavish and decadent, with excellent shopping. Go away and forget all this." She popped her gum thoughtfully. "Los Angeles, maybe." 

My laugh was hollow. "Just walk away? You know it's not over. There will be another Moriarty someday, hell-bent on her revenge."

"So? I'm a Gupta. What do Guptas care for Moriartys? Or Moriartys for Guptas?" She gave me a quick grin. "It's over, Char. Come with me and be a Gupta, too."

I blinked. It was a startling idea, not being a Holmes anymore. 

And even more: to be someone new, someone entirely outside the stories.

But what was to hold me to being a Holmes? I had no family and no foes; nothing to live up to and nothing to rebel against. I could become a Bohemian, even. There hadn't been a Bohemian Holmes in generations. I could, like my Great-Great Aunt Agatha, become that mystery of mysteries: _floral._

Lena studied me, then took her gum out of her mouth. Holding it well clear of our hair, she kissed me. It wasn't the first time that Lena had kissed me, but it was the first time she'd taken her gum out beforehand. 

I leaned into the kiss, and considered being floral. 

Poppies, perhaps.

Eventually Lena put her gum back in her mouth and donned her helmet. I stood, and tucked away my cigarette butt with its incriminating DNA traces, and gathered up my spilt ash, as well: my last act as a Holmes. 

Who I would be next, I didn't know. 

Lena mounted her bike, and I swung a leg around behind her. I snugged up tight against her body and laid my helmet against the chromed spikes of her shoulder.

 _Floral,_ I thought, and was almost glad the end had come.


End file.
